Use SPA Data

Understand collection of asynchronous SPA data

This document explains how New Relic Browser collects and stores your asynchronous single-page app (SPA) data. This will give you a better understanding of the SPA data you see in the New Relic Browser UI. This will also help you more easily add custom monitoring with the SPA API.

Browser interactions

At the heart of New Relic SPA monitoring is the concept of the browser interaction. New Relic defines a browser interaction as anything that occurs in the app user's browser, whether it's a user interaction that leads to a page load or route change, or a scheduled, dynamic update to an app's widget.

A browser interaction includes not just the initial triggering event, but also the activity caused by that event, such as AJAX requests and both synchronous and asynchronous JavaScript. By tracking not just the cause but also the effects of a browser interaction, New Relic provides detailed insight into how users experience your application's views and route changes.

Of course, all apps are different and have different monitoring needs. That's why New Relic gives you default, out-of-the-box monitoring and also the ability to set up custom monitoring of any browser interactions you choose.

Three major categories of single-page app data can be reported to New Relic:

Each of these creates a BrowserInteraction event. If one or more AJAX requests are part of an interaction, then associated AjaxRequest events are also created. These events and their attributes can be queried in New Relic Insights.

Initial page loads

An initial page load is a traditional URL change, stemming from a complete load or reload of a URL. This is indicated in the browser when a page load event fires (the window.onload event).

Route changes

Users of single-page apps experience dynamic route changes in a similar way to page loads. Visitors to a site or app generally do not care how a new view was delivered; they simply know that when they perform an action, a new view appears. For this reason, New Relic treats route changes in a similar way to page loads in the UI.

In order to optimally monitor single-page applications, New Relic starts monitoring many browser interactions that could theoretically lead to route changes. If these interactions do not lead to route changes, New Relic Browser initiates monitoring but then discards them. If these interactions do lead to a route change, New Relic Browser saves the interaction sequence as a BrowserInteraction event, including information about both synchronous and asynchronous activity.

An interaction is considered a route change and saved as a BrowserInteraction event when one of the following occurs:

The URL hash changes (usually using window.location.hash).

A popstate event fires during a callback associated with an interaction.

New Relic collects and saves hash fragments from route change URLs. If you use hashes to pass private or sensitive data, that data may be visible to your New Relic account users. For more on New Relic Browser data collection and reporting, see Security for New Relic Browser.

Custom monitoring

You can use the New Relic SPA API to set up custom monitoring of browser interactions that are not monitored by default. You can also use the API to disable default monitoring.

Custom events are saved as BrowserInteraction events and have the following attributes:

The category attribute will have the value Custom.

The trigger attribute will have the value api. (This is the default value but can be changed with the API.)

Difference from traditional page load timing

To provide optimized data for single-page app monitoring, New Relic measures page load timing in a new way: by wrapping low-level browser functions, both synchronous and asynchronous. This gives a fuller depiction of how long it takes to complete the changes required for a new view.

This is different from the traditional method for page load timing. Traditional page load timing uses the firing of the window.onload event to determine when a page is loaded. This is not an optimal way to measure view change timing because modern web apps often have asynchronous code that runs for a significant amount of time after the window.onload event occurs.

Browser's standard, non-SPA Page views displays different page load times than when SPA monitoring is enabled. Because SPA monitoring is measuring all asynchronous activity, the SPA load times will generally be longer than standard page load times.

The traditional window.onload-based page load timing is still displayed on the SPA Page views page. When you select a specific page load event, Window onload appears as a red line in the page load time chart. You can also select Switch to standard page views in the upper right to return to traditional load timing displays.

Timers

The New Relic agent monitors all asynchronous calls, including timers. Timers with durations shorter than one second are wrapped. Timers longer than one second are not wrapped because usually they are meant for background work or polling that is unrelated to a user interaction.

Events and attributes

New Relic saves browser interactions that lead to route changes and page loads as BrowserInteraction events, and AJAX requests as AjaxRequest events. You can query these events in New Relic Insights.